By Luca Belgiorno-Nettis A small Belgian city tries out a new governance system that gives 25 Average Joes and Josephines decision-making influence on the management of important social issues. When people think of Belgium, it’s bureaucracy and Brexit that typically spring to mind. The multicultural achievements of this polyglot country are smothered by its reputation...Continue reading
By Nicholas Gruen It looks like liberal democracy is falling apart. But we can put it back together if we take democracy seriously enough — as seriously as the ancient Greeks. The chaos of Donald Trump was unimaginable just a decade ago. Brexit was a similar humiliation for Britain’s political class, leading to its bewildered...Continue reading
BY PAUL KILDEA Would a proposal to constitutionally entrench a ‘First Nations Voice’ pass if it were put to a referendum? What about attempts to amend section 44, or replace the Governor-General with an Australian head of state? For years, the conventional wisdom has been that proposals for constitutional amendment must enjoy bipartisan support if they...Continue reading
The German-speaking community of Belgium has become the first region to institute a permanent role for randomly-selected everyday citizens as part of how they do democracy. Led by the local G1000 organisation, newDemocracy was invited to be part of a design advisory group including twelve international members who have designed and operated large scale and...Continue reading
With rising disaffection and public debate, democracies around the world are facing a crisis of confidence. Does Australia need to rethink its democratic structure? Deborah Richards, Australian Institute of Company Directors 01 February 2019 Around Australia, disaffected, angry voices — from community groups to business leaders to striking school students — are demanding change. “It’s...
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, Australian Financial Review Jan. 4th 2019 This time of the year makes you reflect. I’m 64, a Baby Boomer/silver-spooner. My Italian immigrant parents did the heavy lifting, building the patrimony that I now enjoy. This year, I spent the Christmas holidays in Tasmania with my wife, son and daughter. We visited Port Arthur and, in one...Continue reading
Mike Seccombe, The Saturday Paper, Dec 22 2018 There can be few tasks in the life of a political journalist as tediously demanding as the writing up of opinion polls. Most of the time it involves the conjuring of an illusion of news. In the vast majority of those surveys of electoral support, nothing really...
Byron has a reputation for highly engaged community groups which can, at times, make it difficult to establish community-wide perspectives and can lead to public discourse that is highly fractious. Making trusted public decisions is arguably harder in Byron than in almost any other council across Australia. Apathy is not a problem we need to...Continue reading
Across Europe, there is an absence of everyday people contributing substantively to the decisions that shape the cities they live in, both now and into the future. Democracies are struggling to include everyday people in making trusted public decisions. The City of Madrid has embarked on a path of major democratic innovation to solve this...Continue reading
There are few, if any, “right” decisions for a government; instead, the ideal decision is simply one which reflects a position of informed support from a wide cross-section of the community. Making difficult decisions with the support of the community is politically tough. It requires a government to make themselves electorally vulnerable in order to...Continue reading